Monthly Archives: May 2010

Very little from very high

I wrote the following in the middle of the stratosphere on Tuesday night. Alas, no wifi on the plane, and i only just remembered to hit publish now.

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As I grabbed my iPad and headed cross country, I promised myself I would write a little. Here I am, at the veritable end of my journey, writing just a little.

I just don’t have the writing mojo I used to have or thought I used to have or used to think I had. Sadly, reuniting with writerly friends did nothing to spur me on to feats of literary limping, as is my usual style.

To be fair, the friend who is part drinking buddy, part platonic soulmate who generally makes me feel more than I am and better for having tried than not to have done at all, was quite busy. You gotta forgive a guy for not indulging in deep, penetrating faux-intellectual self indulgence and midnight literary aspirations when he’s mid-nuptials.

On a complete side note, this wedding, his wedding to the soulmate who, I think, he really needs, was an end to an era. Many many many units of time and various locations ago, we somewhat boozily, single without romantic prospects and unsure if we wanted the entanglements of another relationship, promised ourselves to each other, provided the planets aligned and deemed it so.

The main condition was that he would have to hit 40, which, a decade my younger, is still years off for him, and by arithmetic I would be a ripe old 50. We would both have to be single without others on deck or in the wings or any other metaphoric closeness.

Of course, being as I moved across the whole of the United States to be with another guy, I arguably fired the first salvo in the dissolution of our pact. Not to mention, we’ve been as good as married for the past six years or so, cohabiting and all, albeit without the legal paperwork.

(Here’s another completely parenthetical, non sequitur diversion. I just had my bodily fluids churn and various muscles clench in fear in the middle of the stratosphere in the middle of this jet in the middle of a flight. I have never heard my name over the loud speaker, and I have never been asked to ring my call button. Until now.

Once I got over my instinctual panic for some kind of horrible announcement, I gave myself a quick frisk and realized my pocket was now unbuttoned. Yup, a new privilege of American Express membership. My name can be read off the card as it sits on the floor of the toilet of an airplane.)

It was a fun wedding especially in that I got to see some folks I rather like. But, I do admit, I’m not a fan of the wedding in general. I don’t know what is missing somewhere in my cerebral cortex, because I simultaneously understand and respect the ceremony, and I don’t.

Why the need for ritual and public promises? I totally get being with someone, and increasingly I now understand the legal rights marriage bestows. Hell, wedding rings even make sense to me, even though I resent their history of marking chicks as chattel.

I have performed publicly. I have performed publicly in a state of undress. I have performed publicly in a few U.S. states and one foreign country. Yet, the idea of standing up there and telling a crowd or even just a smattering of folks what they already know–namely that I planning on sticking with M.–is incompressibly frightening to me. Like stage fright with a soupçon of agoraphobia.

My friends did it twice, once in her home town and then again in his. I think I’d be weakly cowering in the corner if I ever have to do that.

Of course, my eldest brother outed my being the weak link to my uncle. As many might assume, he had thought it was M. who was the holdout. I think it’s a little bit of both of us ducking the party more than the commitment.

Romantically, on phones separated by 3,000 miles, M. suggested that maybe we’d have to do it if only to put the familial nagging on both sides and across two continents to rest.

Is nagging a valid reason? Probably as good as any, like my desire to have M. enforce a “Do Not Resuscitate” order, when my body has started to have enough of this world, or M.’s to have me chuck his ashes into the sea.

Then there’s the nice part of our togetherness and all. Who better to stay with than the one with whom you’ve made a happy life?

Meanwhile, while I pondered all of that, I got to see parts of my family and relics of my old surroundings. I’m not calling my family relics, we’re all getting older, but not that old.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to see the chunk of family or friends that are stressful. That’s another worry about a wedding. I imagine there is no elegant way to leave out people who’ve seen you as a bare ass naked baby, even if you would like to write on an invitation “only show up if you plan on not being too crazy or a total dick.”

I’m pretty sure Emily Post and Ms. Manners wouldn’t even waste the ink explaining why that ain’t done.

Then, there’s a whole other group of folks that I wouldn’t be able to send an invite to that read, “stay home and enjoy your own life, nothing to see here” to avoid their making a fuss or having to find an outfit or driving or getting a babysitter or having to leave the house at all on my account.

I have thrown good parties in the past and have made myself the center attention, but weddings seem so compulsory. They should be just as optional and more fun than when I used to let people get drunk on my back deck before watching July 4 fireworks from the Cambridge side of the River Charles. Has anyone ever felt that way about attending a wedding?

Better to keep it small. If only I can convince M. (and a passel of other people) that two might just be enough.

Coming home?

I don’t have a house here. The places I have lived are now occupied by strangers, sold to the highest bidder. Still and all, I was Massachusetts born and bred.

And, now I’m back again. I’m lying in my nephew’s bed, a bed in which I have never slept. He’s away at school, just to clear up that we’re not the sort of family you see in newspapers, shaking your head and wondering how does that ever, ever happen. No, my nephew is safe, and I lack the predatory spirit.

I’ve never been in this bed, because punk ass little sister that I am, when I moved out of state I returned usually with M. in tow. My big sister got this room, while encoupled or ensconced as M. and I are, we got the bigger room, the veritable suite where my older nephew sleeps.

It doesn’t feel like home anymore. I think it’s because I am in a bed and a room in which I’ve never lain my head. Definitely not the familiar surroundings you hear the cliches drop as “home.” I am with family and very comfortable and grateful for their hospitality; it just ain’t home.

As if to greet me, Logan Airport had a special surprise as I landed in the old, hometown airport. I swear to fucking god on high and all of the saints and spirits, that I saw the meanest boy I ever dated on the escalators.

For a split second, I thought about shouting his name, in order to watch him turn his head in my direction. Then, as I rose up on my escalator and he sunk metaphorically and literally downward on his, I could flip him off. Perhaps a double-handed, two middle fingers raised salute with a lot of wagging and emphatic gesturing.

I opted for dignity and not ever engaging with him again and silently rode up the moving stairs.

I sometimes feel badly that I actually, without kidnapping or water boarding, dated him for so long. It’s hard to explain the mental illness to the very nice, polar opposite man and life I have now. There should be an acronym like “AA” for explaining a stage in a woman’s life when her ultimate choice was a bad one.

The acronym would also help provide the evidence that the hatred I feel is unusual but sane. I reserve it for one person. I’m pretty sure any other guy I dated I would have greeting across the escalators civilly. Hell, I later helped one get a job and then was a good colleague at work.

Best of all of seeing this ghost the moment I landed “home?” He was looking overweight, dumpy and old. A look wholly incompatible with the sun, lemon trees, boogie boarding, enjoyment having life I have now with M.

The curse of fine weather

It’s a gorgeous day outside these four walls. but this time of year, it’s often a gorgeous day. consequently, i’m lazy.

Back in the cold of Cambridge, if there was a day like today, it was almost required to drop everything and soak up some vitamin D. You never knew if rain would inevitably rain on your parade, proverbially or actually, or if another crisis was around the corner. It was almost required to make hay when the sun was shining, and clearly that cliche came from a dank and drizzly corner of the world.

By the way, with that link to Boston’s latest dilemma, I’m beginning to think my old town is becoming Egypt of the Bible days. When will the locusts and frogs descend?

Here I am, safely drinking unboiled water after harvesting today’s lemon crop in my back yard, and I’m OK being indoors. It makes me feel guilty, all the while I know that statistical days of sunshine are greatly in my favor here.

I’m not a complete and utter slug of sloth, to mix a metaphor. I’m on laundry load three, the dishwasher has been loaded, run and unloaded, and a fresh shower curtain now hangs anew. I have not played in the sunshine.

Walt Whitman I am not.

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

I know not of these emotions. Not today.

The anti-Whitman, but not like in an Emersonian way or anything cool like that, I have succeeded in making my iPad into essentially a thin client.

Through the automagic of network computing, I can look at the desktop of one of my home computers, and tunnel into the files and do whatever the hell I want. Better yet, that desktop is connected to my backup disk with pretty much all of my data goodness, files galore I can now retrieve and manipulate iPad in hand.

As an aside, I was a total, arrogant douchebag to a chick at the boxing viewing party we went to last night. Fascinated to play with our new toys, after a while the woman declared the iPad inferior to her Mac Air (sheesh, talk about expensive toy), because it’s all about “access.” So, click click, I showed her my home desktop at my virtual fingertips.

Apart from party douchebaggery and braggadocio along with just seeing if I could actually do it, there is some method to my geek madness. It’s rooted in the black, dark days of my early foray into weblogging bullshit.

You see, one thing my old employer tried to do in trying to show me as the ill-will driven loon they needed me to be was to show I was using their computers and time to fiddle in my shitty craft. I hadn’t been, apart from the odd lunch hour (my time) or quick comment, but they tried, oh lordy-lord, they tried.

(Internet tip # 5,376, if you are going to ‘blog on the company dime, don’t date stamp your entries. I use Splee’s Fuzzy DateTime WordPress plugin. Thank you Lee McFadden and the development community on the world wide web for humanizing my time away from the actual precision my computer could be reporting. Nothing like “wee hours” or “today” to confound the time police.)

This job, therefore, one can’t even get to my website from their network. The IP address is blocked for all and sundry and their peering eyes, myself included.

It’s been a convenient excuse for my general malaise and writer’s block. Despite my boss’s own verbal notice that I SHOULD write in my down time and not to worry about the man’s keeping me down, I have kept off my own playground. No risk, no questions, no complaints, the lessons I took from my last gig.

Now, though, technology might give me a boost and perhaps switch off that writer’s block. During stolen daylight minutes when I am not too tired and eager to doze on the couch lulled by the TV, maybe I can write a little bit.

Tunneling to my own playground on my own equipment located 40 miles from work, I could have an out-of-body writing experience privately. We’ll see how it goes, but the man can’t be keeping my data down.

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